No One Is Beyond Redemption
by Servant of the King
Summary: Who would have thought that Black Widow could ever be an Avenger?


J.M.J.

 _A/N: Hello! Thanks for reading! This is my first Avengers fic, and it will have multiple chapters – I'm not really sure how there will be. Let me know what you think!_

 _ **No One Is Beyond Redemption**_

Part I

Chapter I

A Different Call

This was going to be easy. The French ambassador always went jogging at six in the morning sharp. She had several bodyguards jog with her, but that would hardly protect her. After all, she always took the same path through the park, which led right past a tall building with a shoddy security system and access to the sewers. Not the most glamorous escape route, but once a person was down in there, the chances of tracking them down were practically nonexistent.

Natasha smirked grimly. It was silly of the ambassador to have such a set routine. It was making things too easy. The ambassador didn't even have a chance.

There was no sign of the ambassador and her bodyguards yet. Natasha checked her watch. It was only 6:12. At the ambassador's usual jogging speed, she would reach this part of her route for another four minutes. Natasha let herself relax a little. Crouching on the roof of this building holding her scoped rifle wasn't too comfortable.

Even as she relaxed, she felt rather than heard someone watching her. Acting casually, she took a glance around. There was no one on the roof with her. It was odd. In the last week, she had had this feeling that someone was watching her frequently. A couple of times, she had caught a glimpse of a man, who would always quickly disappear. He was good, and that was the weird thing. If his goal was merely to shadow her, he must know that she had already made him. If he meant to kill or capture her, he had had opportunities already. She had no idea what his intention was, and she didn't like that.

He was the one thing that could mess this mission up. Natasha had been worried about that, and if he was here now, she was even more concerned. Yet, she shrugged. She should have known this mission wouldn't be as easy as it sounded. They never were. Her primary objective was to kill the ambassador. If she failed that, her life wouldn't be worth much anyway. She would worry about her shadow before that only if he tried to interfere. Even so, she took another look around before she lifted the gun to her shoulder again.

The minutes ticked by slowly. The shadow made no appearance, but Natasha still seemed to feel his presence and was keeping an eye out for him. She checked her watch again. Six minutes had passed. The ambassador was late. Surely, she couldn't have taken a different route or skipped her job this morning?

Then Natasha spotted them. She closed one eye and looked through the sight of the rifle. The ambassador, in her usual blue tank top and green jogging shorts, was coming with her usual cloud of bodyguards around her. Then Natasha saw something that made her lift her head in surprise. A young woman was jogging next to the ambassador. She was about sixteen, out of shape, and no doubt what had held things up. From her surveillance and research in preparation for the hit, Natasha recognized her as the ambassador's daughter, who was much less concerned with her health than her mother. It must have been a difficult task to convince her to come along for the job this morning.

Natasha set her jaw and looked through the sight again. Just because the woman's daughter was there shouldn't change anything. A mission was a mission. She had to make this hit.

Her finger trembled a little as she put it to the trigger. She hated it when something changed in a mission and threw her off like this. She knew that wasn't the real reason for her hesitation, that the real reason was because it was easier to kill when she wasn't reminded of her targets' lives and relationships, but she wouldn't admit it to herself. She would pull that trigger, and it might bother her for a day or two, but that was it. Soon the ambassador would be just another mission in her past.

She was about to pull the trigger when she felt it. There was someone standing right behind her. For a few seconds, she kept up the act that she hadn't noticed, but she did allow a smirk to cross her face. Then, with a suddenness that would have taken anyone off guard, she whipped around and drove the butt of her rifle into the person's knee.

At least, that was what she meant to do. The man – he was the same one she had seen following her before – had anticipated the blow and dodged it. He grabbed her arm in an attempt to keep her from repeating the blow, as well as to wrench the gun from her hand.

That was a mistake. Natasha took hold of his wrist with her other hand and then used him as a ladder to launch her feet straight at his head. This blow connected, and he went down, but Natasha had continued the flip so that she landed on her feet.

Her shadow picked himself up immediately, not much fazed by the hit, and they circled around each other for a moment. That was when Natasha saw that her shadow was armed with – a bow? As in the kind used to shoot arrows?

There was no arrow on its string now, though, and the man was using the bow as a weapon in its own right. Natasha didn't waste time marveling over it. She had seen a lot on her different missions, and having to fight someone with a bow wasn't the strangest thing she had ever had to do. She just had to try to get it out of his hands.

He swung it at her, but she dodged out of the way. Then she aimed a kick at him, which he also managed to dodge. This went on for several seconds, one of them trying to hit or kick the other who always dodged, until finally Natasha landed a kick in his stomach and he doubled over. She was quick to take advantage of her position and brought down a heavy blow to the back of his neck. He went down and looked like he would stay down, at least for a few moments.

Natasha watched him for a few seconds, but he didn't move. Then she sprinted over to the edge of the roof again, scooping up her rifle as she did and pointing it out over the park again. The fight hadn't taken long, but it had taken long enough. The ambassador, her daughter, and the bodyguards were just disappearing behind a stand of trees. Natasha cursed under her breath.

"Ms. Romanoff."

She spun around at the voice, her rifle held up. Her opponent had woken up – maybe he had never been knocked out – and was holding his bow again, this time with an arrow fitted on its string and pointed straight at her. Maybe a bow and arrow wouldn't be Natasha's choice of weapon, but at this range, the stranger couldn't miss, and it would be just as lethal as a bullet from her gun. They were at stand-off.

The man must have realized it, too, but it didn't seem to bother him. "We haven't met officially, yet," he said as casually as if he was meeting her at a dinner. "I'm Clint."

Natasha barely moved, but she liked this guy already. "Natasha."

"I know," Clint said. "I've been following you."

"At least you admit it," Natasha replied. "Who are you? CIA?"

"SHIELD," Clint corrected her.

Of course. Natasha should have realized it. Clint. A bow and arrow. "Oh, so you're the famous Hawkeye. Clint Barton, one of SHIELD's most accomplished assassins. I've heard a lot about you."

"Only good things, I hope." Clint grinned

Natasha ignored the question. "Are you here to kill me?"

"That's my mission," Clint affirmed.

"Then you're not doing a very good job," Natasha criticized him. "You could have killed me twice in the last three minutes and a dozen other times before today."

"But I didn't," was Clint's unexpected response, "just like you could have killed that ambassador and didn't."

"I was a little distracted," Natasha replied. "If you're not going to finish your mission, what are you doing?"

"Deciding whether I should finish it," Clint replied. "I've heard a rumble. There's a sale of a biological weapon going on in Budapest."

"I'm not really interested," Natasha said.

"I told SHIELD about it," Clint went on. "They said it wasn't definite enough to send anyone over there to stop it, so I'm not going to have any backup from there. This might just be the chance you need."

"I need?" Natasha repeated. "Like I said, I'm not interested."

"If you help me on this one, finding and destroying that weapon, I think I might be able to find something you would be interested in."

"Like what?" Natasha replied.

"Why don't we talk about it over coffee?" Clint suggested. "It's really early in the morning to be talking business without coffee."

Natasha didn't move for a moment. She didn't trust Clint, but maybe this was the chance she'd been looking for. She would be valuable to SHIELD, and in the last few years, she hadn't gotten very far with the KGB. If she handled this just right, she might be able to get exactly what she wanted.

As if on cue, both of them lowered their weapons at the same time.


End file.
